osman

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Sketchfu-ing since 05/21/2009 (user #35699)

male

London

www.osmankader.com /www.myspace.com/osmandrawing

About osman

The Researcher:
Osman Ahmed

The work of contemporary Kurdish artist Osman Ahmed looks back on the experiences of the Kurdish people during the Anfal repression by Saddam Hussein’s forces in 1988. Forced to flee from Iraq, Ahmed journeyed to Iran where he was imprisoned, and later to Syria, Russia and the UK. His displacement reflects the plight of the Kurdish people shown in his drawings, where crowds of people migrate endlessly through a deserted landscape towards an unknown destination. Individual stories are evoked in a collection of bright, intense acrylic works and the exhibition also includes a series of dark, abstract drawings from the artist’s experience in prison. This exhibition, displayed in the John Singer Sargent Room with the First World War painting ‘Gassed’, pays contemporary tribute to the endurance of civilians in the face of chemical attack, forced migration, mass killing and deep suffering.

Osman Ahmed studied at Sulaimaniyah College of Art and later at Camberwell School of Art in London. His current doctoral research investigates artists’ responses to crimes against humanity and documenting Anfal /Genocide through drawing


INFORMATION


The Kurdish Genocide: 1978-1988
According to Human Rights Watch report of 1993, ‘Genocide in Iraq’, up to 2000 villages were destroyed and more than 100,000 Iraqi Kurds were killed by the Iraqi regime in Kurdistan between 1987 and 1988.

On April 15, 1987, Iraqi aircraft dropped poison gas on Zewa Shekan, close to the Turkish border in Dohuk, and on villages of Sergalou and Bergalou, in Suleimaniyeh. And, on Sheikh Wasan and Balisan. Unarmed civilian men, women and children were lined up with their belongings that they could carry; their men were separated and shot; the same inhumane fate met the rest, either dying along the way of hunger or disease, or shot and buried in mass graves. These incidents were the first of at least 40 documented chemical attacks on Kurdish towns and villages over the succeeding 18 months.
“Allegations about enormous abuses against the Kurds by government security forces had been circulating in the West for years before the events of 1991; Kurdish rebels had spoken of 4,000 destroyed villages and an estimated 182,000 disappeared persons during 1988 alone. The phenomenon of the Anfal, the official military codename used by the government in its public pronouncements and internal memoranda, was well known inside Iraq, especially in the Kurdish region. As all the horrific details have emerged, this name has seared itself into popular consciousness - much as the Nazi German Holocaust did with its survivors. The parallels are apt, and often chillingly close”. (quote from Human rights watch 1993)
Human Rights Watch February 1990 report, Human Rights in Iraq, a Middle East Watch report, reconstructed what took place, from exile sources, with what in retrospect turned out to be a high degree of accuracy - some of the larger claims made by the Kurds seemed too fantastic to credit. As it transpires, this has been a humbling, learning process for all those foreigners who followed Kurdish affairs from abroad. Western reporters, relief workers, human rights organizations and other visitors to Iraqi Kurdistan have come to realize that the overall scale of the suffering inflicted on the Kurds by their government was by no means exaggerated.

2007- Present: Researching for a PhD in Drawing, at Wimbledon College of Art the project is
Documenting the Kurdish Genocide 1988 throw Drawing.
2005- 2007: London University of Art, Camberwell College, MA drawing, part time.
1988 -1990: Art teacher, teaching life drawing/painting to adults in Saqez Kurdistan of Iran, as well as
Teaching children 7-15 years old, survivors of Halabja, at a refugee camp near Saqez City, Iran.
1980-1985: Institute of Fine Art, Sulaymani, South Kurdistan, First Degree.

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Suntan wrote (over 2 years ago)

Hi. I've been watching your work for the past few weeks. Thank you for bringing it here and now to me.

Candy_Freak wrote (over 2 years ago)

Hi! main bhi pakistani hoon i am from lahore! :)